If nobody else wants to do it, I might take a crack at it. Google Photos is a pretty impressive offering and the old PWA API still seems to be able to get at most of the underlying data model.

I've been hearing good things about Google Photos, although I haven't tried it myself yet.

I just uploaded my Picasa2 code to GitHub (https://github.com/belltown/Roku-Picasa2). It was based on Chris Hoffman's original Picasa code with some bug-fixes and OAuth2 authentication added. Feel free to use the code if you wish to make any changes or to create a Google Photos channel (or start from scratch if the code looks too horrible).

I plan to add a screensaver to my Picasa2 channel. Unfortunately, it may be a few weeks before I get to it. My computer broke, and I'm waiting for a new one to come from China, so I'm not doing any Roku development right now. Once it arrives and I finish off a couple of other projects, I'll get to work on it.

Belltown, thank you for making the picasa2 channel! Can you please add the screensaver function?? I've been waiting!

From the Roku home screen, go to Settings>Screensaver>Screensaver, and select 'Picasa (v2)'. From there you can select Custom and specify either Featured Photos or Your Photos. If the Picasa2 channel has been run and authorized, the default is to display photos from your own Picasa Web Albums. It will also display photos from your Google Photos uploads.

Google Drive has a "Google Photos" folder/tab (sometimes auto-sorted in folders by year), but any file/folder organization there is not reflected in the view at the actual Google Photos site/app. Likewise any albums, photo edits, or the auto animations/collages/etc at Google Photos don't show up in the Google Drive view.

As far as Picasa Web Albums (both on the site and apps), it shows "Auto Backup" as well as any manual albums created at Google Photos (it also seems to show pictures sent/received from Google Hangouts sessions).

On the Picasa Web site, the "Auto Backup" album is organized into a separate sub-album for each day, and the deprecated "Instant Upload" album (which is empty most of the time) still shows up for some reason. But on the Picasa Roku channel, "Auto Backup" plays as one slideshow without sub-albums (more practical?), and there's no "Instant Upload".

Hi belltown, I've been looking for a way to restore Picasa access to my NowTV box (based on a roku unit). Your updated channel looks perfect for this.

Unfortunately the only way to add any channels other than the few approved ones is via developer mode (as demonstrated here for plex)

I tried to use the zip file from your github to side load to the unit but get the error 'Install Failure: No manifest. Invalid package'

I have no experience coding for a Roku, so wondered if there is anything obvious I am doing wrong, or are the files on Github not set up to sideload?

Apologies if none of this makes sense!

You can't side-load Picasa2 from the zipped GitHub repo because the project uploaded to GitHub does not contain the OAuth2 key, which is developer-specific. You'll need to get your own key.

Click the 'Download ZIP' button on the GitHub page. This will download the file, Roku-Picasa2-master.zip. Extract the contents of that file then you'll have a folder called Roku-Picasa2-master. You might see another Roku-Picasa2-master folder inside that one. Whichever folder contains images, source, manifest, etc. will be the folder you'll use for your own Picasa project. That will be the folder you'll need to zip up yourself and side-load [Make sure before side-loading that the .zip file you are about to side-load contains source, image, manifest, etc]. However, the channel won't work until you set up your own OAuth2 key. See the file source\private-git.brs for instructions on how to do that. Once you've updated the private-git.brs file with your own OAuth2 key, go ahead and create your zip file and side-load it.

Wow, thank you so much for this update! I've really been wanting a way to display a proper slideshow screensaver on the TV screen.

Is there a way to make the images full screen? I looked at the code on github and I think it has something to do with this line:canvasItem=[ {url: canvasItems[counter], TargetRect:{x:Rnd(ds.w-420), y:Rnd(ds.h-300)}}, {url: canvasItems[nextimg], TargetRect:{x:-1000, y:-1000}} 'Off the screen to preload ]

but my coding experience is really limited to HTML, CSS, and a little javascript. I noticed in the main slideshow it works full screen, but there are no canvas items, but in the slideshow screensaver it makes all the images really small. Hoping there's a way to make it all display full screen.

Wow, thank you so much for this update! I've really been wanting a way to display a proper slideshow screensaver on the TV screen.

Is there a way to make the images full screen? I looked at the code on github and I think it has something to do with this line:canvasItem=[ {url: canvasItems[counter], TargetRect:{x:Rnd(ds.w-420), y:Rnd(ds.h-300)}}, {url: canvasItems[nextimg], TargetRect:{x:-1000, y:-1000}} 'Off the screen to preload ]

but my coding experience is really limited to HTML, CSS, and a little javascript. I noticed in the main slideshow it works full screen, but there are no canvas items, but in the slideshow screensaver it makes all the images really small. Hoping there's a way to make it all display full screen.

Again, thank you for updating this!

That screensaver code is mainly the code from the original Picasa author written a long time ago. My guess is the images were made small to look a decent size on an SD TV, and the code was never changed to make them larger on HD screens. Plus, it's a screensaver, so I can see why it wouldn't be written to take up the whole screen. The code you listed for the image canvas gives the (x, y) coordinate of the image origin. The image size is determined when the server request is made, e.g:

It could be changed to display larger images on larger screens, or even display full-screen images. However, I don't have time to work on it in the immediate future, but I'll add it to my list of future possibilities.

The Picasa Web Albums Data API, which is what the Roku Picasa and Picasa2 channels use, will continue:

The API will still support other functions, including reading photos, reading albums, reading photos in albums, and uploading new photos.

Some of the API functions being discontinued include: flash support; community search; mutation operations other than uploads; and all support for tags, comments, and contacts. I don't believe those functions are used by the Roku Picasa channels.